Total Money Makeover Update: April

God blessed us with a lot of money coming in, and we were able to put it to good use going out. Thanks to our first-time homebuyer’s tax credit we were able to:

finish our emergency fund

pay off the car (Debt #1)

pay off student loan #1 (Debt #2)

buy new furniture

set money aside to fix-up our UGLY, obnoxious bathroom

set aside money to replace my laptop, which is due to conk out any day

pay extra on our “little mortgage” (Debt #3)

pay our minimums on Debts #4 and #5

go to a marriage conference

pay our taxes

join a CSA

Initially, we had planned to put all of our tax credit money toward debt. But, two days after we got the check, our last non-broken piece of living room furniture hit the dust. And everything was stained with black ink from when Fitz chewed up a pen. I took that as a sign, and we decided to splurge. And by splurge, I mean buy some low-priced non-stained furniture. The Tuesday of spring break, we searched high and low for new or used furniture. We decided on a new couch, chair-and-a-half, and ottoman. We LOVE them. So do the puppies.

We also decided to give ourselves a modest budget to fix up our main floor bathroom. It’s painted a nasty flesh color, has a wallpaper border under the paint that looks like something dripping from the ceiling, has a faucet that just sprays water at the back of the sink, and has a toilet paper holder that was jammed into a hole in the cupboard where there was nothing to attach it to. It’s a good thing I don’ t know who “decorated” our bathroom, because I would have some words for them.

After all was said and done this month, we paid off 6.5% of our debt and have 92.1% remaining. It was so exciting to finish our emergency fund and completely pay off two debts! Unfortunately, not every month is going to be like this. In fact, according to our debt snowball calculator, it will take us until July of 2011 to pay off Debt #3, a portion of our mortgage amount which has a 5-year balloon. Fortunately, that estimate assumes that all of our months are “average months,” and I have plans to make June and July better than average!